10.2 Sustainability as the 7th Performance Target
Key Takeaways
- PRINCE2 v7 adds sustainability as the seventh project performance target, alongside benefits, cost, time, quality, scope, and risk.
- Sustainability targets and tolerances are documented in the Business Case, referencing the organisation's ESG goals.
- A Sustainability Management Approach, part of the PID, defines the actions, reviews, and controls used to achieve sustainability targets.
- The Plans practice addresses sustainability through three lenses: product sustainability, delivery sustainability, and benefits sustainability.
- Sustainability tolerances can be set and breached just like any other target, triggering the same exception mechanism.
The Seven Performance Targets
PRINCE2 v7 expands the set of project performance targets from six to seven by adding sustainability. The full set is shown below.
| # | Performance Target | Focus |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Benefits | The project delivers the outcomes and benefits in the Business Case |
| 2 | Cost | The project stays within its approved budget |
| 3 | Time | The project delivers by the approved completion date |
| 4 | Quality | The project's products are fit for purpose |
| 5 | Scope | The project delivers what is in scope and excludes what is out of scope |
| 6 | Risk | The project's exposure to threats and opportunities is acceptable |
| 7 | Sustainability | The project's environmental and social impact is acceptable |
Adding sustainability is not cosmetic. It means every level of the project — project, stage, and team — can be given a sustainability tolerance, and a breach of that tolerance triggers the same exception mechanism as a cost or time breach. Sustainability is therefore not a side concern delegated to a specialist; it is a mainstream control on the same footing as budget.
Where Sustainability Targets Are Documented
Sustainability targets and their tolerances are documented in the Business Case. The Business Case references the organisation's ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) goals and translates them into project-specific, measurable sustainability commitments — for example, a maximum embodied-carbon figure for a building project, or a minimum percentage of recycled content in a product. Because the Business Case is the document that justifies the investment, placing sustainability targets there makes them part of the investment decision rather than an afterthought.
The Sustainability Management Approach is the management product that operationalises those targets. It is part of the Project Initiation Documentation (PID) and defines the actions, reviews, and controls that will be applied to achieve the sustainability targets. In other words, the Business Case says what the sustainability commitment is; the Sustainability Management Approach says how the project will deliver it, how it will be measured, who is accountable, and when it will be reviewed.
Three Sustainability Views in the Plans Practice
The Plans practice addresses sustainability in three distinct ways. The Practitioner exam tests the distinction, so it is worth being precise.
Product Sustainability
Product sustainability considers the environmental impact of the project's product across its whole lifetime — not just during delivery, but through use, maintenance, and eventual disposal or decommissioning. For a building, this includes operational energy use and end-of-life recyclability. For a software system, it includes the carbon footprint of running the system in production for years. Product sustainability asks: what is the environmental cost of this product existing?
Delivery Sustainability
Delivery sustainability considers the climate and environmental impacts of the activities that produce the product — the construction works, the travel, the materials consumed, the energy used by the project team. Delivery sustainability asks: what is the environmental cost of making this product? A project could deliver a low-carbon product (good product sustainability) while itself being a high-carbon delivery (poor delivery sustainability), so the two views are independent and both must be managed.
Benefits Sustainability
Benefits sustainability considers whether the benefits delivered by the project will be sustained after the project closes. A project that installs energy-efficient equipment delivers a benefit only if that equipment is actually operated efficiently after handover. Benefits sustainability asks: will the benefit still be there in three years? This view links sustainability to the Benefits practice and to post-project benefit reviews.
Setting and Breaching a Sustainability Tolerance
Because sustainability is a performance target, it can be given a tolerance at any management level. For example, a stage might be given an embodied-carbon tolerance of +5% above the planned figure. If the actual embodied carbon for the stage exceeds that tolerance, the Project Manager raises an Exception Report, and the Project Board must decide whether to proceed, to replan, or to escalate. The mechanism is identical to a cost or time tolerance breach — sustainability is not a softer, optional control.
This is a common exam scenario: a project's sustainability metric drifts outside its tolerance, and the question asks what happens next. The answer is the standard exception path: Exception Report to the next management level, decision, and possible replan or Business Case re-verification if the breach threatens the project's continued viability.
Common Exam Scenarios
- Where are sustainability targets documented? The answer is the Business Case (with the Sustainability Management Approach in the PID defining how they are achieved).
- What does the Sustainability Management Approach contain? Actions, reviews, and controls to achieve the sustainability targets.
- Which of the three Plans-practice sustainability views applies? The scenario describes environmental impact of the product across its life (product sustainability), of the delivery activities (delivery sustainability), or of the benefits after closure (benefits sustainability).
- What happens when a sustainability tolerance is breached? The standard exception mechanism applies — an Exception Report is raised to the next management level.
A project's Business Case commits to a maximum embodied-carbon figure for the new building, and the PID describes how the project will measure and control it. Where are the sustainability target and its management approach respectively documented?
A project installs energy-efficient lighting but the client operates it poorly after handover, so the energy savings fade within two years. Which Plans-practice sustainability view has failed?